Introduction to Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is an important Internet marketing strategy.  The goal of SEO is to help increase your site's visibility in search engines.  There are literally hundreds of articles written on the Internet with information to increase your SEO.  To get you started, we recommend reading documentation from the Search Engines themselves.  Google has an article about how to increase your SEO, and Bing has an SEO article also.  Below we have summarized many of the most important aspects of increasing your SEO:

• Original Content.  One of the factors that all search engines emphasize is to have original content.  This just means your website information shouldn't be copied from a different website directly.
• No broken links.  If a search engine crawls your site and finds a broken link, it will negatively impact your SEO.  Make sure that any URL links that you have on your site go to their correct destination.
• Updated regularly.  Search engines can tell if your website is kept updated.  Active websites tend to rank higher then sites that are never updated.  Updating your site will help your website rank higher in search engine results.
• Using Keywords on your webpage.  This includes having Keywords in your Title, URL, and Header Tags.  For example, let's say your website is about Greyhounds.  You will want to use the word "greyhound" in your webpage titles and headers when applicable. It'll help your SEO to use the keywords describing your website in locations that search engines crawl. Also, if you have an internal link it is important to keep the keyword in the hyperlinked text.  For example, a good keyword internal link for our site: here is more information on installing WordPress.  Note that the keywords "install" and "WordPress" are part of the link.
• Keep your site clean.  If your website has a virus on it, it can dramatically effect your SEO.  Make sure that you periodically check your site for viruses and keep any third party programs updated.

Just remember that it may take time to rank high in search engines. But as long as your site's updated, original, and functional it will increase it's SEO.